Europe and US teaming up for asteroid deflection

NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirect Test, DART, mission is the US component of AIDA, intended to collide with the smaller of two bodies of the Didymos binary asteroid system in October 2022. ESA's Hera mission will then perform follow-up post-impact observations. Credit: NASA

Asteroid researchers and spacecraft engineers from the US, Europe and around the world will gather in Rome next week to discuss the latest progress in their common goal: an ambitious double-spacecraft mission to deflect an asteroid in space, to prove the technique as a viable method of planetary defense.

This combined mission is known as the Asteroid Impact Deflection Assessment, or AIDA for short. Its purpose is to deflect the orbit of the smaller body of the double Didymos asteroids between Earth and Mars through an impact by one spacecraft. Then a second spacecraft will survey the crash site and gather the maximum possible data on the effect of this collision.

The three-day International AIDA Workshop will take place on 11–13 September in the historic surroundings of the "Aula Ottagona' in central Rome, part of the Baths of Emperor Diocletian which went on to serve as a planetarium in the last century.

Participants will share the current progress of the two spacecraft making up AIDA—including the smaller nano-spacecraft they will carry aboard them—as well the latest results of global astronomical campaigns undertaken to learn more about the distant Didymos asteroids.

NASA's contribution to AIDA, the Double Asteroid Impact Test, or DART spacecraft, is already under construction for launch in summer 2021, to collide with its target at 6.6 km/s in September 2022. Flying along with DART will be an Italian-made miniature CubeSat called LICIACube (Light Italian CubeSat for Imaging of Asteroids) to record the moment of impact.

Credit: European Space Agency

Then will come ESA's part of AIDA, a mission called Hera which will perform a close-up survey of the post-impact asteroid, acquiring measurements such as the asteroid's mass and detailed crater shape. Hera will also deploy a pair of CubeSats for close-up asteroid surveys and the very first radar probe of an asteroid.

The results returned by Hera would allow researchers to better model the efficiency of the collision, to turn this grand-scale experiment into a technique which could be repeated as needed in the event of a real threat.

Hera is currently undergoing final phase B2 design work, ahead of a decision to proceed by Europe's space ministers at the Space19+ Ministerial Conference this November, as part of the proposed new ESA Space Safety Programme. Launch will occur in October 2024 and the journey will take about two years.

"DART can perform its mission without Hera—the effect of its impact on the asteroid's orbit will be measurable using Earth ground-based observatories alone," explains Ian Carnelli, managing Hera for ESA.

ESA's Hera asteroid mission approaching the smaller of the two Didymos asteroids to map the impact crater left by NASA's DART spacecraft. Credit: European Space Agency

"But flying the two missions together will greatly magnify their overall knowledge return. Hera will in fact gather essential data to turn this one-off experiment into an asteroid deflection technique applicable to other asteroids. Hera will also be the first mission to rendezvous with a binary asteroid system, a mysterious class of object believed to make up around 15% of all known asteroids.

"And our mission will test a variety of important new technologies, including deep space CubeSats, inter-satellite links and autonomous image-based navigation techniques, while also providing us with valuable experience of low-gravity operations.

Credit: European Space Agency

"I also believe it is vital that Europe plays a leading role in AIDA, an innovative mission originally developed through ESA research back in 2003. An international effort is the appropriate way forward—planetary defense is in everyone's interest."

A near-Earth asteroid system, Didymos's main body measures about 780 m across, with its moonlet about 160 m in diameter, about the size of Egypt's Great Pyramid. It was selected carefully as a deflection target.

Due to the relatively small mass and gravities of these bodies, the smaller asteroid orbits its parent at a comparatively low velocity of a few centimeters per second, making it feasible to shift its orbit in a measurable way—something which would not be achievable so precisely with a lone asteroid in a much more rapidly moving solar orbit.

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User comments

While they're doing that, they really should start getting a system together for launching, from LEO, a really beefy answer to any really beefy random threat from those > 100 meter rocks that populate the nightmare headlines of the Express.uk.co on a weekly basis.

Some day that scandal-rag is going to cry wolf for real, and it could be next year, or next decade. But we need to be ready for the former, like... n o w .

Nothing will work better than a nuclear device. Yet there are several entities who are pushing their "gravity tugs" or other concept and they have hijacked this train. Sad.

A human crewed Nuclear Pulse Propelled spaceship capable of interplanetary missions would necessarily carry a couple thousand "pulse units" (bombs). Those devices would be just as effective deflecting a rock as pushing a spaceship.

The Parker-Dyson-Spudis Continuum states only a kiloton range water shield can make Human Space Flight Beyond Earth and Lunar Orbit practical (Parker). Only a Nuclear Pulse Propulsion system can push such a shield around the solar system (Dyson). The Moon is the only place to acquire the water for shielding (Spudis), assemble, test, and launch nuclear missions.

The NASA Space Launch System is the only human-rated Super Heavy Lift Vehicle with an escape tower that makin launching fissile pits direct to the Moon an acceptable risk. SLS launch cadence needs to expand to 6 per year.

Cheap incremental mass reduction could be done using simple devices like slingshots with void rated elastics to fling compacted boulders, and then on the receiving end have large enclosed spiral flume-like structures that collect and absorb the incoming kinetic energy. Sorta like pinball meets asteroid mining.

i dunknow ren, sounds to me as if you are adding more complex variables to an already unpredictable situation?

as i said, i do not know enough to make a decision. for or againstyour speculation

however, you could do simple, inexpensive experiments off Earth to prove if you could make it work

for safety sake, using small, cheap, low grade drones for testing

crowd-source the project?

& i forgot to mention on using asteroid drilling as a mass ejector for propulsion

since we would not need a large tunnel to fit a nuke in,it would be cheaper & more efficient to drill a number of smaller holesprobably around the rock's circumferencethat method would give the rock steering jets for setting a more accurate course

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